When you start Gnobog for the first time, you can see the
main window. From there, you will be able to open several
bookmarks documents (whose filenames are displayed in the
documents list), create a new document, close all documents at
once, and access the online help (which you might be reading
right now :-).

To perform these operations, you can use the 'file' and
'help' menus. You may also use the toolbar which offers a
shortcut to the most used actions.

Each document opened with Gnobog has its own window, and
you can even have several windows for a single document if you
wish. One such document is special : the 'Storing Zone', which
you can see as Gnobog's own bookmarks. More on this later.

All other possible operations are accessible in the 'popup'
menu, displayed when you click the right mouse button over a
document.

Popup menu actions operate on a single document (or even on
a single view of a document), as opposed to main window menus and
toolbar that allow to manipulate several documents.

So the popup menu is what you will use most often when
editing one or more documents, or the Storing Zone itself. It's
contextual in the fact that not all options are usable all the
time, according to the context : some actions need something to
be selected, some others need something to be copied or cut, and
some need both :-)

You can also perform a lot of things with 'Drag and Drop'
manipulations, to move and copy bookmarks, or even send them in
other applications like browsers, mail clients, text editors, and
so on. Experiment ! And send us ideas or bug reports :-)

The following sections will present the first steps to the
main usages of Gnobog: editing your bookmarks, and... using them
!

To import your existing bookmarks, you use 'open' in the file menu or
toolbar. You'll then be presented a dialog with 3 choices (as of
version 0.4.x of Gnobog) : open Netscape bookmarks, Mozilla
bookmarks, or from a specified file.

The first 2 choices are only shortcuts to standard places for
netscape and mozilla bookmarks. It may not be accurate (we don't
read these programs preferences for now), in which case you'll
have to specify the location of the bookmarks file you want to open.

To specify a file to open, you may write its filename (with the
path) in the appropriate entry box, or use the 'browse' button
that'll display a file dialog. In this file dialog, you can use
the mouse and/or the keyboard (you can use 'tab' key for
completion when you type the beginning of a file or path name).

When you click on 'OK', you'll have a new window containing the
bookmarks imported.

Once opened, you can edit and reorganize your bookmarks. See the
chapter on editing. Feel free to experiment with all popup menu
features, to open as many windows you need, and to drag and drop to
your soul's content :-) But don't forget to save your work, just
in case!

You have several possibilities to save your work. See the chapter
on editing. We have taken a few precautions to prevent the
complete loss of your documents, and we use Gnobog ourselves, but
we can't claim it's perfect right now. Anything might happen,
even the complete disintegration of the Universe ;-) We have
ideas to improve Gnobog in a lot of ways, but drop us a note
anyway if you desperately need one feature, or find any bug. We
will take it into account, as Gnobog development goes on.

The Storing Zone is a default bookmarks document, which is
automatically saved when you quit Gnobog, and automatically
opened when you launch it. So it can be seen (and used) as your
main bookmarks repository.

You can import your existing bookmarks in the Storing Zone by
opening them (which creates a new window), and then copy/paste
or drag and drop them in the Storing Zone. If you want to save
your Storing Zone before quitting, you can, just as any other
document (with the popup menu). You can even save a copy in
another file.

The Storing Zone is saved in .gnobog/storing_zone.html, in the
same format as Netscape bookmarks. You can't change this
filename as of version 0.4.x, hence you can't 'save as' either,
you can only 'save' and 'save a copy', which should be enough :-)

Right now (as of version 0.4.2), there's no 'autosave'
feature at regulars intervals of time, nor is there any 'undo'
function. The Storing Zone is always saved when you quit,
without prompting (other documents ask you if you want to save
when modifications have been performed). As for any file, a
backup is made nonetheless, before writing.

Remember that all operations can be performed on the Storing
Zone, beside the exceptions noted above. Don't fear using them !
For instance, you can have a new view of the storing zone (a new
window without menu and toolbar), that you can use alongside
your browser. And you can hide the title columns to have even
more space to display your bookmarks.

Speaking of browsers, a few Gnobog features are maint to improve
your surfing experience (and more will come in the future). See
the chapter on browsing. You have special menus, drag'n'drop,
double-click, and a few options that are equally useful when browsing
or editing, like the 'set as root' feature for example.

Opening URLs (your internet addresses stored as bookmarks) is
not limited to Web browsing, you can also open them in ftp
clients from Gnobog.